


spiral slowly, screaming

by bebtea



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: 5am, Anger, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, ZRS3 Spoilers, set between season 3 and 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28160592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bebtea/pseuds/bebtea
Summary: Five begins to process some of the madness of the last few years, post S3M60.(Cross-posted from Tumblr as I keep losing my work on there and want to keep track of it properly!)
Relationships: Runner Five & Sam Yao, Runner Five/Sam Yao
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	spiral slowly, screaming

**Author's Note:**

> My mental health is always worse when I stop for a while, and I reckon Five is probably the same.
> 
> Set between S3M60 and S4M1, spoilers for all of S3. Also, I finally named my main Five in this! Only took three years!

It’s a few weeks after the ice cream tower when Five finally unravels at the seams.

They’ve been bright and shiny and happy ever since, wrapped up in Sam’s excitement about the idea of the baby, in the soft relief that blankets the township as loved ones, confused but no longer mind-controlled, begin to return to themselves. In the first breath of peace that comes after war, Five smiles. They smile until their jaw aches. They smile, not in the twisted grimace She put on their face, but in genuine joy. At least, they think it’s genuine.

But now, a mile out from Abel, their face suddenly drops, and they stop walking.

“Five?” Sam asks. He’s not over comms, but at their elbow, breathless. “All good?”

They’re not far from the forest of fallen runners. Not far from where they finally, last week, laid Three’s armband to rest. Between there and here, there’s a trickling river, only shin height in the dappled summer afternoon. When Five was a child, they went wading in streams like these. They’d spend all their free time outside, wandering the parks and the scraggy woods and the boarded up town centre aimlessly, building forts, crossing rivers on stepping stones, trespassing. All skills that have come in handy since. The memories are a little hazy, a tad unclear, like someone’s rifled through them and put them back in the wrong order. They untie their shoelaces. Why are they out here? It’s hard to recall even leaving Abel, what mission they’re on, when they started.

“What are you doing?”

He has a gun with him, and they both know it. Of course, it’s stupid to leave Abel without any sort of weapon, but Sam has never carried anything more than a butterfly knife and a hockey stick before, so the gun isn’t for zoms.

He has it in case Five snaps. In case they try anything. In case they hurt him again.

They step into the water.

Five has always worn many different faces with different people. With superiors they were serious, dependable, reliable; with their Runners, funny and fair and firm. Sometimes with Sam - times like this, ankle deep in a rippling brook - they don’t have to be anyone. And that sounds like bliss, but really, it forces them to figure out who they are when they’re not being anyone else.

“You’re going to get your shorts wet,” he says, a tad anxious. “Shouldn’t we be getting back?”

As it turns out, who they are when they’re not being anyone else isn’t someone they like. That’s why they use this number, isn’t it? So that they don’t forget. So they don’t slip back into being reckless, feckless, worthless Rory Jeavons. Rory Jeavons who could never hold down a job. Rory Jeavons who could never pass an exam. Five has purpose, meaning, friends. Five is a symbol; Rory was nothing.

Well, Five only had those things before She stripped them away, so the difference these days is harder to spot.

They sit. The water is cool, and laps their stomach. There’s birdsong in the forest. The world is a little bit fuzzy, although they’re not sure why until Sam says-

“-are you crying?”

He’s crouched on the riverbank, the toes of his pumps curling in the mud. He has size twelve feet, and comfy, fitting shoes are hard to come by, but Five found these for him in a burnt out _Brantano_ and he’s tried to avoid wearing them down by cutting out his habit of scuffing his heels as he walks. If Five just focuses on those shoes, they won’t have to think. The shoes. The water. The stones underneath them. Birds in the distance. Shoes, stones, water, birds. Don’t think.

Shoes, stones, water, birds. The teenage boy on the _Laetitia Greenwald_ , skimming pebbles on the sea, a fat gull arcing and swooping over his head. He wore hi-tops in still-luminous colours, clearly a prized possession. They see his face, a second before the explosion. They see a hi-top with a calf still attached, sinking below the ocean surface, sinking down for a long time.

“Five…” Sam’s voice is far away, and muffled, although they know on some level that he’s in the river too, now, that his hands are on their shoulders. Doesn’t he know they don’t like to be touched? They kick, and try to scream, but no sound comes out, and somehow they don’t have the energy to fight as his fingers dig in and he drags them, coughing and spluttering, onto the bank. The splashing finally makes those birds scatter back into the trees. The gull, circling away in smoke.

“What the hell was that?!” He demands as they cough and retch and wheeze the filth of the river back out again. He’s panting, white pumps covered in slime. “Are you trying to kill yourself?!”

When they don’t reply, he repeats the question gently. _A-are you trying to kill yourself?_

Five rubs their mouth with the back of their hand, and starts to laugh, the sound still a little watery, then hoarse and unpleasant and lacking all mirth. _Isn’t every Runner trying to do that somewhere deep down?_

“…Rory, you’re scaring me.”

That should snap them out of this, their real name handled with so much care on the tip of his tongue. The fear in his eyes should make them want to protect him, and the best way to protect him is to get far, far away, because they’re the one who hurt him. They’ve hurt him once, so they could do it again. The fear in his eyes is justified.

It shouldn’t make them so _angry_.

“C’mon, let’s go home. It’s not far. We can both grab a shower and you can maybe just talk about it for a while with Maxine, yeah?”

No. “Leave me here,” they sign in shaking hands.

“I promise, that’s not going to happen-“

“ _You should_ leave me here.”

He frowns. He’s so happy, Sam. Of course, not all the time, but his mind doesn’t crawl into the darkest possible shadows when he leaves it unsupervised for a moment. He doesn’t split himself into a thousand shards for a thousand different situations. He is whole, and he wholeheartedly believes that things will get better.

“You need to come home, Runner Five. Janine’s orders.” He feigns seriousness to match his furrowed brow. Five steps back.

“I wish I’d died on that boat.”

He turns cold for the first time at that, a beat of silence between them as a cloud breaks the warmth of the sunlight.

“No. No. None of us get to say that, okay? Being alive is a gift. You don’t get to wish it away. And sometimes it’s awful, and it’s hard, but you keep going for all the ones who didn’t make it. You keep going because they fought for you to survive. You keep going for Sara Smith and Archie Jensen and, bloody hell, you keep going for Simon!”

“You don’t understand!” They vocalise it, try to shout, but the words are barely more than a whisper. They’re going to hit something, they’re going to scream, something, something, something. The rage inside them feels like it’s sparking, waiting to find touchpaper, to catch light.

“I understand that you’re trying to process the truly horrible things that you’ve been through in the last few months.” He sighs. “No, the last few years, and that’s okay. I know you’re angry. I know you’re frightened of yourself. And I know I don’t know the half of it, but Five… I’m not letting you go. I’m not giving up on you just because you’re struggling.”

He’s crouching again, his arms outstretched and non-threatening. They could push him into the water and take the gun from his waistband in one fell swoop-and-run. Then what? Move into one of Simon’s old hidey-holes, or roam the hills like Tom de Luca carving words into their skin, or run right over the cliffs and fly for just a moment? Sam would never catch them, never find them, and eventually he’d move on. He’s strong enough.

“Please, just come home with me.”

“I can’t. I don’t deserve it.” And, because he’ll refuse to accept that truth, they’ll give him one he can’t refute. “I’m not… I’m not safe to be around.”

Broken people just break everything they touch, even when trying to be made new. Didn’t Si teach them that?

Sam’s eyes are sparkling with tears. “ _Please_ , Rory.”

“I _can’t_ ,” they try again, but their knees are already buckling with exhaustion, and they’re falling into his arms. All they can do for a while is sob.


End file.
